Business Challenges and Successful Solutions

Small to medium-sized businesses want to stay competitive, increase revenue, and remain profitable at the same time. This can be a challenge. Whether companies find this challenging because of a slow economy, market saturation, or other reasons, many companies are re-evaluating business strategies and internal processes to overcome these obstacles. Companies are realising that in order to maintain their status or grow, they need to focus on their existing customers as much as or more than acquiring new customers, and do so cost-effectively. They cannot afford to lose a customer, ignore specific customer demands, or treat even one customer poorly, because for most companies, hanging on to a customer means increased revenue through cross-selling, upselling, and repeat business year after year. Losing one customer over a dispute over a $50 part has a far greater impact than today's $50 - the company would lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars in future revenue from that customer who will spend money with the competition for years to come. Realigning a company's employees and processes to focus on customer satisfaction is not always easy. The sales department is focused on closing deals for the month, the marketing department is focused on generating new leads with new campaigns, and the service department is trying to pull in their own revenue - so who's job is it to care about the customer? It's everyone's job. For many successful companies, creating a customer-focused business strategy was the first step. The companies' leaders proactively implemented customer-focused plans, processes, tools, and corporate culture. By instilling the commitment throughout the organization - in sales, marketing, customer support, and other departments – employees became dedicated to serving customer needs and treating each customer as an individual. To help employees do their job, companies refined workflow and business processes and invested in software that connects everyone in the organization to each other, and to the customer. That's where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software fits in. Using CRM software, marketers are able to profile and market to customers, sales teams can collaborate on sales opportunities, service representatives can manage customer support cases, and everyone in the organization can track contacts, communications, and account activities. The results that successful companies have seen include gaining a competitive edge, increasing referral business, increasing market share, rising sales, and cost savings. Senior Flexonics Pathway (manufacturing), Wilden Pump & Engineering (manufacturing), Ipsos-Reid (research services), The Oxford Princeton Programme (education), and Connect Tech (high-tech/distribution) are five examples of how companies are winning with a customer-focused culture, redefined business processes, and CRM software tools. They are succeeding in their commitment to satisfying customers throughout their life with the company, and building profitable relationships by doing so.
  

Senior Flexonics Pathway

Seven years ago, when David F. McGrath, Director of Sales & Marketing at Senior Flexonics Pathway, started with the firm, they were ranked sixth domestically and tenth globally in their industry (based on revenue). With the challenge of increasing market share in the mature market of heavy industrial fabric and metal expansion joints, he developed and implemented an aggressive business plan with a customer-focused culture rooted in a flexible front line empowerment program. Within five years, they steadily grew to their present leader ship status, with the next closes t competitor being approximately one-quarter of their size. The same philosophy that enabled them to rapidly grow in a mature market is the bedrock of logic they built into implementing a CRM software solution for their sales, customer service, marketing, and management staff.

Senior Flexonics deployed Maximizer Enterprise as their CRM solution to their global sales force to manage the distribution of leads and collaboration on complex opportunities that often incorporate four or more sales districts and over 300 different sales teams. Now they collectively manage over 2500 ongoing opportunities at a time, with sales people around the world synchronizing data with the head office, managing complex sales opportunities, communicating with team members, assigning roles and tasks, projecting close dates, and rating the probability of close. Most importantly, they've improved their close rate by using Maximizer Enterprise to develop, share, and implement sales strategies and tactics to reflect market changes, competitor reactions, and cost fluctuations.

"We rely on Maximizer Enterprise as the cornerstone to maintain our leadership position in the near and foreseeable future," says McGrath.

Sales teams collaborate on complex opportunities to better serve the customer and close sales

Saves time to handle more customers and opportunities at one time

Wilden Pump & Engineering

At Wilden Pump & Engineering, "Engineered Revolution" is more than just a marketing         tagline. It's a way of life that represents Wilden's commitment to providing its customers with the most advanced pumps available. And Walter Bonnett, Marketing Technology Coordinator at Wilden, has taken on this way of life by revolutionizing the way business is done. Step by step, he is streamlining operations and creating processes to increase sales productivity and improve marketing - to secure its position as the industry leader.

When Bonnett joined Wilden, between Wilden's inside sales team, regional field sales managers, and a network of over 200 distributors worldwide, lead delivery was slow and the information about each lead was incomplete. Distributors were unhappy, because the delay in receiving leads - which were often duplicates of previous leads - was too slow so by the time they received them, they were no longer "hot". The daily summary of basic information on leads was not good enough and they were losing sales because of it. Further, the marketing team often had to guess what their customers' pains were, how their existing pumps were working, and what upcoming expansion projects they had. Even basic information like the application for the pump was missing from the customers' records, and they had to blindly market all pumps to a multitude of industries.

After investigating several CRM packages to help overcome these internal challenges, Wilden selected Maximizer Enterprise and implemented the software to fit into the company's sales and marketing process and help achieve its sales objectives.

Now, the inside sales representatives assign leads to each region by creating a new opportunity for each qualified lead. Distributors log into the web-based portal to view all the details on each of their leads. And each regional sales manager accesses the information from the field to view all opportunities for the distributors in his area. So distributors receive "hot" leads in real-time and have all the background information needed to make an informed and effective sales call.

More importantly, giving distributors and remote employee’s access to the customer base enables them to input details into each opportunity as it progresses from lead to close. Information such as what the prospect's problems or needs are, what they want to pump, what type of facility they have, and what pumps they are currently using are inputted into the customer record in customized fields so the data can later be analyzed.

This is proving valuable for managers to know the status of sales opportunities, or why certain deals may have been lost. Further, the marketing team was previously unable to distinguish effectively between new and old prospects. Now they can precisely target their direct mail and email campaigns to the right audience.

"Historically, we have been out of touch with our end users, since we let the distributors build the relationships with them," says Bonnett. "Maximizer Enterprise puts us closer to the end users, which means we now have a better understanding of their needs. The processes we established and information we are gathering are helping us stay competitive in our position as the industry leader."

Funnel leads to distribution partners in real – time, see status and pipeline

More effective sales calls with information passed in leads

Gather market information on why sales were lost to adjust various business factors

Ipsos-Reid

Ipsos-Reid, part of the Ipsos Group - one of the ten largest market research companies in the world - has clients that span virtually every industry sector, who they provide with an array of research reports and services depending on their specific needs. Angus Reid, President, recognized that they needed a solution that would enable them to profile clients and provide them with personalized offerings, as well as manage client and media relationships.

They selected Maximizer Enterprise and are now able to precisely profile clients according to factors such as industry sector, geography, company size, and the interests of each decision-maker. Then they can cost-effectively build, execute and track targeted direct mail and email marketing campaigns with different messages for different groups of clients and prospects.

"As a B2B company, we rely on this tool to help us reach audiences quickly with market relevant communications - ultimately cultivating strong relationships to grow our business," says Elen Alexov, Direct Marketing Manager, and Ipsos-Reid North America.

By successfully implementing this unique, low-cost direct marketing strategy, Ipsos-Reid was awarded 2001 Marketer of the Year by the British Columbia Chapter of the American Marketing Association.

Profile customers and prospects in to specific segments for more effective target marketing – cultivate strong relationships to grow business

Save money with email marketing

Quick execution to reach audiences quickly

The Oxford Princeton Programme

The Oxford Princeton Programme, a leading provider of in-class, on-site, and web-based training programs for the energy and commodity industries, needed a way to effectively manage, profile, market and sell to its growing customer base. With so many types of specialized courses offered in introductory, intermediate and advanced levels, tracking its students and up-selling its programs depended on very specific target marketing to its customers.

With such a wide variety and level of courses offered, it is very important for The Oxford Princeton Programme to target the right courses to the right audience. With their CRM software, they can target and promote packaged programs to training managers at companies, while they promote separate courses to targeted individuals in the same company. They are also able to track which courses the students took, which courses they showed interest in, which marketing pieces were sent to them to promote a new course (whether by mail, fax, or email), and which courses were subsequently taken after that. This process is repeated on an ongoing basis to develop long-term and profitable relationships with its customers. Further, The Oxford Princeton Programme relies on new customer acquisition through referrals from its satisfied customers.

"There has been a noticeable increase in repeat business due to the targeted marketing campaigns we use to promote courses," says William Cain, Global Marketing Director for The Oxford Princeton Programme. "We depend on Maximizer Enterprise to help us profile our customers, and track courses and marketing campaigns, in order to keep our business growing."

Profile customers and prospects with specific segments for more effective target marketing

Repeat marketing, repeat sales and up-selling

Connect Tech Inc.

David Worthen, President of Connect Tech knows that customer satisfaction is two-fold: excellence in product design and top-notch customer service. By instilling this commitment to excellence in Connect Tech's sales and technical support staff, the company is carving a niche for itself in a competitive industry. In order to deliver on their promise of top-notch customer service and edge out the competition, they needed a way to track customer information and communicate more effectively and efficiently between departments.

They selected Maximizer Enterprise for their sales, technical support, and management staff so they can now share all relevant customer information. When a technical support representative enters a support incident or RMA into a customer record, the sales person who is following up with that customer has all the information they need to deal with the customer. This level of account management service is helping the company build long-term, trusting relationships with customers.

"Previously, sales and technical support were operating independently of one another, which hindered our ability to provide a high level of customer service," says Jeannette Cantin, Special Projects Coordinator at Connect Tech. "After the initial implementation of Maximizer Enterprise, we began to improve our communications between departments and with our customers almost immediately - the benefits are already very obvious to us."

One of Connect Tech's customers recently commented to a sales person: "I always like doing business with people of such dedication. Thanks for keeping on top of my account and occurrences."

Cantin says, "Offering a quality product is only half the solution: if we can't communicate with our customers effectively and give them top-notch service, then we haven't done our job. Maximizer Enterprise is making this a lot easier and less time consuming."

Differentiate from competition through solid customer relationships and satisfaction

Share information between Sales and Tech Support to better serve customers and improve efficiency

Conclusion

In an effort for companies to stay competitive and grow their businesses, successful small and medium-sized businesses are challenging the status quo in their organizations and empowering front-line employees with the information they need to serve and satisfy customers.

To enable employees to focus on customers, companies are turning to a leading CRM software tool, Maximizer Enterprise, which integrates sales and account management, marketing automation, and customer service & support tools. Empowering all employees - including remote and mobile staff - with the same information and the tools to communicate, streamline processes, and manage individual and team efforts will make your customers feel important, and give you an edge over your competitors.

With customer-focused attitude as a basis for success, companies are seeing that they can realise their business objectives of increased revenue and reduced costs.